OK, skimmed trhu the blawg, and my instincts were dead on:
As my degree program continued, I found myself interested in the work of Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva and Simone de Beauvoir.
This was exactly what my advisor (or whatever you call it) wanted to push my Buk-study into. And don't get me wrong, me and her got, and get, along swell. It's just that her line of work on literature (Kristeva, Irigarary) bores me to death. They focus on extremes like: "unflaggingly, like an inescapable boomerang, a vortex of summons and repulsion"(Kristeva, 1982)", but in doing so miss the point. Yes Buk' life was extreme at times, but that's not the main thing. The main thing is that he was in full control of his art despite the "vortex of summons and repulsion" his life often touched.
Do you get it Erica? The vortex may be interesting, and easy for an academic to think is flashy and important. But the real important thing is the clear cut words Buk put down on paper despite everytthing else (childhood, drink, women, gambling, work). Plenty of people are dragged into the vortex, but poetry they do not write. Its so easy to mix the two things up. OK so maybe Van Gogh was crazy, and boy! he even cut off his ear because of a woman (body politics, symbolic castration, woman as the other), but when he painted those paintings he was saner, and saw things clearer, then most of us.
So hey, if studying "a vortex of summons and repulsion" is what turns you on to Buk's poetry, then knock your socks off. There's plenty of other academics out there doing it too, so have fun. But is this really what you want to do with your time?
PS: you write: "Where does Bukowski fit in?", but it's not about Bukowski, or the vortex he was in, it's about the poems he wrote, so lucidly.
PPS: and the same goes for you, Erica, I'm not criticizing you personally. I'm criticizing your words. Or the words you've borrowed from I & K.
Good luck to you, I'm sure you'll have fun despite the vortex of gripe I've cast you into...
;-)
But now I have to get back to my very own "vortex of summons and repulsion"...